Jim Sterling
James Nicholas Stanton (born ), better known online as Jim Sterling, is an English gaming journalist, best known for his no-nonsense criticisms of both the games he plays and gaming companies he feels are either failing to take responsibility for producing poor games or or various practices that are unfair to gamers and YouTubers alike. Biography Sterling was born in the UK, although as he revealed in his review for The Beginner's Guide he had a deeply unpleasant upbringing where he and his brother were beaten by his mother's then-lover,The Jimquisition: The Beginner's Guide review a Hell's Angel outcast named The Preacher, which led to him creating the character of Jim Sterling and taking on the name - a name he has expressed his wish to have legally changed.Ask.fm: I got a lot of questions about this. It's been public record for years, I just don't bring it up because as far as I'm concerned, my name is Jim Sterling. I'd have had it changed legally years ago if not for the fact that I have legal things to get through first, and one day I'll clear that off the docket and get it done. At the least, it's no different from performers like Vic Reeves or Ray Peacock using stage names, but it's a little more than that, because my "stage name" is the name I identify with the most. Some people over the years have used my birth name to intimidate or insult me. It doesn't manage to do that, but it *is* pretty disrespectful, as it ignores my wishes to be called by the name I consider myself as having. I've literally no interest in the name my absent parents gave me. I'm Jim Sterling to everybody who knows me, and it's the name I consider myself as having. Prior to going freelance and embarking upon his YouTube career, Sterling worked as a review editor for Destructoid and a content creator for The Escapist. As for August 2018, he has contributed a monthly segment to Cultaholic called WreSterling. Sterling currently lives in Jackson, Mississippi with his wife. Jimquisition Sterling is best known for Jimquisition, a regular segment where he critiques parts of the gaming industry that he sees as being contemptible. Among his targets are Gearbox Software for their grossly misleading previews of Aliens: Colonial Marines and their utter refusal to take responsibility for the appalling quality of the game once it was released onto the unsuspecting public, Konami for all manner of actions ranging from erasing P.T. from existence in one of their most bizarre actions in a long list of bizarre actions during the acrimonious parting of ways between Konami and Hideo Kojima to the company's frankly appalling treatment of their franchises and employees as well as journalists and the gaming public, Nintendo for their inability to give gamers the new Star Fox game they want while simultaneously giving them a Star Fox game they certainly didn't want, indie developers who abuse YouTube's Content ID system to try and have criticism of their games removed from the platform - something which, as of March 2017, has happened to Sterling on at least four occasions - fanboy culture that has gotten so extreme that fans of games such as No Man's Sky and Zelda: Breath of the Wild are throwing around death threats at critics who dare voice the opinion that their games aren't 10/10 classics, and most famously of all his long-running dispute with Digital Homicide Studios. There are also secondary segments which play after the episode of Jimquisition ''has ended: most famous of these is ''Fuck Konami News, where Sterling will report the various business practices of Konami that enrage the gaming community, such as using the Silent Hill and Castlevania ''franchises for pachinko machines rather than making actual new games in those franchises. More recently he has added the ''Oh Ubisoft! segment where he discusses the baffling and maddening decisions made at Ubisoft, such as their 2016 announcement that Beyond Good & Evil 2 was in pre-production...even though Ubisoft had claimed at various points since at least 2008 that the game was being made, and was using that to promote other titles by Michel Ancel such as Beyond Good & Evil HD or Rayman Origins. Lastly, he also has a segment called Boglin Watch, where he talks about the current revival of Boglins, the late 80s/early 90s toys which Sterling is a fan of, and regularly uses to decorate the Jimquisition ''set. Commentocracy Sterling introduced a new character at the end of the 15th May 2017 edition of Jimquisition, Duke Amiel du H'Ardcore, a foppish 18th century aristocrat who would offer "Elite Gaming Wisdom" which had been culled from various comments sections in his inimitable style. Having made fleeting appearances during subsequent Jimquisition episodes, it was announced after the 18th September 2017 edition of Jimquisition that the Duke would have his own show, Commentocracy, with the first edition going live on 21st September 2017.'YouTube': Real PC RPGs Are For Nerds (Commentocracy) Sterdust After the 17th July 2017 edition of Jimquisition'YouTube': Steam Needs To Axe Shithead Developers (The Jimquisition) was hit with a copyright strike by WWE for the video using a two second clip from the introduction of the company's ''Unforgiven 2001 pay per view, Sterling responded by putting out the call asking if any of his viewers could help him with a project he was working on, which he mentioned would require a lot of spandex. Several weeks later Sterling debuted a new persona, Sterdust, with the attire, makeup and even the adapted Jimquisition theme all based on the Stardust character that Cody Rhodes had been using prior to his departure from WWE in mid-2016. However, rather than being a one-time gag for his channel, soon Sterling was performing for Pro Wrestling EGO in his native Mississippi under the Sterdust name, initially appearing in a non-wrestling capacity although he has begun to compete in matches. In January 2019 SterDust won his first wrestling championship, becoming one half of the Pro Wrestling EGO tag team champions alongside his Constellation partners Ursa Major, Joshua O'Hagen and Alex Graves holding the belts until 18th May when they lost to The Renegades of Phunk. In August of 2019, Sterling was announced as guest general manager of Ryse Wrestling,Twitter: @ryse_wrestling Ryse will have a special guest in the house this Saturday, and a special role! Jim Sterling, host and video game reviewer, is coming on a night when Ryse is in turmoil. As guest GM for the night anything could happen! Who in the Ryse locker room is ready for #WreSterling? and, a few months later in January 2020, he was announced as new general manager of the company which also saw Sterling move from Mississippi to Philadelphia.Twitter:@JimSterling Recently, I took over Ryse Wrestling in PA, having replaced their general manager as Executive Commander. This is an expression of how I feel about this brave new era. #RyseWrestling #WreSterling #TheRulingClass https://instagram.com/p/B78xdcfHY-K/?igshid=v8l9m0uxkgkzTwitter: @JimSterling Finally made it. Kicking back at Tattooed Mom with Justin and Conrad. Hello Philly! https://instagram.com/p/B8XfxKlHPkI/?igshid=tk8l08azc05v Digital Homicide Feud In November 2014 Sterling made a Jimpressions video'YouTube': SLAUGHTERING GROUNDS - New 'Worst Game Of 2014' Contender (aka Squirty Plays) of an indie shooter that passed the Steam Greenlight called The Slaughtering Grounds, in which he savagely criticises the game for its bad coding, poor controls, near non-existent AI, frequent glitches and overuse of generic art assets. A few days afterwards, developers Imminent Uprising posted a response video titled Review The Reviewer that was a reupload of Sterling's original video with various pieces of text savaging Sterling superimposed on top, with the phrase "I'm Jim fucking Sterling son" - a phrase Sterling himself has since claimed - appearing frequently. In response to this Sterling reuploaded that video on his channel with new commentary on top of it because he found it highly entertaining to see a developer act like a spoiled child throwing a tantrum, and around this time word got out about not only how bad The Slaughtering Grounds is, but also Imminent Uprising's public hissy fit that somebody called their awful excuse for a game an awful excuse for a game, which included their deleting negative reviews and even banning people who spoke badly of the game, as well as not giving credit to the artist whose image the developers had simply stolen for their game artwork without giving credit. Yet despite all of this, Imminent Uprising continued, posting another video entitled Review The Reviewer Round Two where they uploaded the audio of Sterling's video with text overlaid on top, accusing Sterling of being a "leech" who was hurting the entire indie developer community. A week after this, Sterling received a copyright takedown strike from Digital Homicide Studios LLC,Twitter: @JimSterling Dear ImminentUprising, developer of Slaughtering Grounds. You DMCA-wielding cowards. You won't win. demanding a full apology for his description of the game as an "absolute failure" - and it quickly became apparent that the basis of their lawsuit was because they spectacularly failed to understand that the term "Fair Use" should not be taken literally - leading to Sterling filing a counter-claim, while YouTube allowed the takedown to expire. Yet rather than let it go, Imminent Uprising continued to claim they were wronged and were blaming the game's lack of success on Sterling and Sterling alone, by which point Sterling was recapping the entire affair on his channel.YouTube: The Slaughtering Grounds: A Steam Meltdown Saga (The Jimquisition) Rather than learn from their long list of mistakes, in March 2016 the studio now going by the name of Digital Homicide filed a lawsuit of up to $10m] against Sterling for "assault, libel, and slander"Kotaku: Angered Game Developer Sues Critic Jim Sterling For $10 Million because of his repeated criticism of the company and their games, even though in the cases of Devil's Share and Galactic Hitman Sterling was not even aware that they were Digital Homicide titles as the studio released those games onto Steam under the guise of a different company - something which Sterling referred to in a later article on his website.The Jimquisition: Digital Homicide and the Case of the Sockpuppet Developers On February 22nd 2017, the lawsuit was dismissed with prejudice''The Jimquisition'': A Statement Regarding Romine v Stanton and soon afterwards Sterling posted a near forty-minute video detailing the lawsuit.YouTube: When Jim Sterling Was Sued For $10 Million By Digital Homicide (The Jimquisition) In early 2019 it emerged that Digital Homicide had resurfaced, with Robert Romine now heading up the company rebranded as Digital Homicide Uncensored, with a series of blogs posted on their site blatantly misrepresenting what happened with the lawsuit while trying to paint themselves as the victims of some kind of bullying campaign instigated by Sterling, which Sterling addressed in a video tearing into some of their claims.YouTube: Digital Homicide Resurfaces With Some Incredible BS Theme Tunes *''Born Depressed'' by Drill Queen (18th October 2011 - 22nd May 2017) *''Stress'' by Jim's Big Ego (29th May 2017 - present) Subscriber Milestones *Jim Sterling hit 500k subscribers on May 22nd 2017. References Category:Users that joined in 2006 Category:Male YouTubers Category:Gaming YouTubers Category:YouTube Reviewers Category:English YouTubers